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Inch High aka Inchy..

Goodbye Deano off you pop.

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16 minutes ago, The Great Mass Debater said:

Compare the money spent by Norwich and Villa and see the difference in resources

I agree. Therfore the fact Smith adjusted the style and tactics (despite not his preferred way of playing) proved to me he was more likely to get a tune out of an incredibly poor PL squad than Farke was (who'd had a whole season and the 'only' 11 games of this to prove he could adapt and get the most out of his resources)

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10 minutes ago, Fiery Zac said:

So therfore the reason we had another patch in January, coincidentally once some players were back from injury and we had some sort of squad to choose from, that looked competitive and got some results....is....?

Barely a patch, we have been comprehensively relegated, the majority of which now has been under Smith's tenure. Remember that we had that 11 game unbeaten run under Hughton. That proved to be the exception rather than the rule - we never replicated that form ever again. In the same way Mike Walker was never successful again after 94 and Lambert has stunk out everywhere he has ever been since leaving us - ironically he actually did a decent job at Villa given his circumstances, not that Villa fans would recognise that.

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12 minutes ago, Fiery Zac said:

an incredibly poor PL squad

I hope we can at least all agree on this.

I wonder why so many of us thought we'd recruited so well in the summer. What was going on there? Blind optimism?

 

I remember when we signed Drmic and I watched his Youtube highlights reel and thought he looked a great player, with caps to back that up. Years later I realised that footage was about 4 years old and Drmic had been off the pace for years.

It's actually pretty laughable how excited many of us were at our summer recruitment (I certainly was), happy to believe that the first Prem season was just a necessary evil to resolve the financial problems at the club, but now, that repaired we could move onto the next stage of our development and give Farke the calibre of player he needed to take us forward.

Psych! Despite a lot of money outlayed (in Norwich terms, and also the much bandied 11th highest in Europe) the players were still sh*te!

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The problem is, and always was the players.

I just feel Farke was blamed for the poor performances, when it wouldnt have mattered who the manager was, Farke, Smith, Alex chuffing Ferguson.

I cant really name a single player who has excelled themselves this season - certainly none of our new signings have produced, not even Normann, who for a few games looked the business. People talk about Rashica, but he has really produced very little for all his promise. 

Aarons has had a poor season by his standards and looks to have gone backwards. Hanley has been praised yet also derided by some. Pukki has been steady and shown he can score, but we have been toothless generally all season

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14 minutes ago, The Great Mass Debater said:

The problem is, and always was the players.

I just feel Farke was blamed for the poor performances, when it wouldnt have mattered who the manager was, Farke, Smith, Alex chuffing Ferguson.

I cant really name a single player who has excelled themselves this season - certainly none of our new signings have produced, not even Normann, who for a few games looked the business. People talk about Rashica, but he has really produced very little for all his promise. 

Aarons has had a poor season by his standards and looks to have gone backwards. Hanley has been praised yet also derided by some. Pukki has been steady and shown he can score, but we have been toothless generally all season

And this is where we'll have to agree to disagree, whilst also agreeing the recruitment was the main problem!

It hasn't mattered who's in charge as we got relegated, and yes, comprehensively. But Smith did what Farke either couldn't or wouldn't. He went back to basics and just got the extremely limited squad to do the basic things and try and nick some wins. He played to the very few strengths the squad had and negated as much as possible, the weaknesses:

- a very very good striker who will score goals no matter what other rubbish is around him.

- a youngster in Idah who has strength and pace and can really worry and hassle defences and be the support that Pukki can thrive off.

- a non existent midfield that we started to bypass whenever possible as it wasn't capable of playing through PL teams

 

Farkes approach is an ideal. It wasn't practical with the resources at his disposal. Was he stubborn or just naive? Don't know. But it didn't work no matter what. 

Smith, despite this not being his usual way of coaching a team, played fairly unattractive football to try and get results. It worked in patches but the injuries and general quality in the squad told.

Edited by Fiery Zac

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18 minutes ago, Fiery Zac said:

Smith did what Farke either couldn't or wouldn't

Didnt matter though did it. The outcome with Smith has been no better than if we had kept the faith with Farke. We've still been relegated, we've still been sh*te and we've still stunk the place out according to most other teams fans (not that I care what they think - my point is, I dont think switching to Smith achieved anything - the football has still been sh*te to watch, painfully ineffective and our reputation is still mud).

The reality is we will never be able to compete in the Premier League without either keeping the players who might grow into PL standard players (Aarons, Godfrey, Buendia etc) or without serious investement - not kids for the future, or cut-price relegated Bundesliga players.

And as long as that remains the case it doesnt really matter who our manager is. All I know is we lost the best in the business at getting promoted from the Championship and I dont think that's something we should have tossed away.

I remain to be convinced that Smith will get us promoted again. Jury is still out. I do feel there needs to be a major overhaul this summer though. Smith needs to install a single way of playing that will be effective in the championship and subsequent Premier League seasons and he needs to bring in the players he needs to make that work and cast off any players that were for the Farke system that cant fit into his new one. That is his remit and if he fails to achieve that, nothing will convince me that dispensing wth Farke in favour of him was the right move.

Edited by The Great Mass Debater

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1 minute ago, The Great Mass Debater said:

Didnt matter though did it. The outcome with Smith has been no better than if we had kept the faith with Farke. We've still been relegated, we've still been sh*te and we've still stunk the place out according to most other teams fans (not that I care what they think - my point is, I dont think switching to Smith achieved anything - the football has still been sh*te to watch, painfully ineffective and our reputation is still mud).

The reality is we will never be able to compete in the Premier League without either keeping the players who might grow into PL standard players (Aarons, Godfrey, Buendia etc) or without serious investement - not kids for the future, or cut-price relegated Bundesliga players.

And as long as that remains the case it doesnt really matter who our manager is. All I know is we lost the best in the business at getting promoted from the Championship and I dont think that's something we should have tossed away.

I remain to be convinced that Smith will get us promoted again. Jury is still out. I do feel there needs to be a major overhaul this summer though. Smith needs to install a single way of playing that will be effective in the championship and subsequent Premier League seasons. That is his remit and if he fails to achieve that, nothing will convince me that dispensing wth Farke in favour of him was the right move.

I agree with most of that, but it's hindsight. The change was to give us the best possible chance of staying up. From what I know and saw of Farke managing in the PL, we had virtually no hope. Smith, whilst many will claim has done nothing and changed nothing, did give me hope. We looked like we could compete and get results. I simply didn't feel that way with Farke, unfortunately. Its not a nice thing to think as I'm not inpatient as a fan, I believe in giving managers time and I love Farke. But thats the reality and whilst again I agree there's no one better than Farke in th3 championship, I agreed the change needed to be made, to roll the dice, to try something different. Farke had plenty of time to adjust, change and make us as competitive as possible. He just didn't do that in the PL.

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9 hours ago, Branston Pickle said:

At Brentford the main aim was keeping them in the division to start with.  He did a decent job there.

Keeping them in the division? They made the play-offs in the season before he arrived.

As for the argument that he deserves time with NCFC to build his own squad, he had plenty of time at Brentford. Didn't seem to bring much progress, did it? 

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I didn’t think we should have sacked Farke, but getting rid of Smith wouldn’t make that right. Let’s  give him some time, and hope he gets some input into our recruitment this summer.  

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On 30/04/2022 at 18:43, Worthy Nigelton said:

Should have never sacked Farke but now we have we have to stick with Smith and let him build his own team. Which I fear will be packed with brutes and a more attacking version of Pulis's Stoke

Yep, I hoped we wouldn't panic and sack Farke, but any new manager coming in has by definition earned a chance to put his own team together. Smith's not had that yet.

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4 hours ago, canarybubbles said:

Keeping them in the division? They made the play-offs in the season before he arrived.

As for the argument that he deserves time with NCFC to build his own squad, he had plenty of time at Brentford. Didn't seem to bring much progress, did it? 

Yes, and Ipswich made the same play-offs.  Look what happened there.  

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3 hours ago, Branston Pickle said:

Yes, and Ipswich made the same play-offs.  Look what happened there.  

The fact that Ipswich made those play-offs is totally irrelevant to Brentford's future after those play-offs: unless they met each other in a crunch match where one of them would be promoted or relegated, their histories were totally independent of each other. You claimed that Smith arrived at Brentford at a time when staying in the league was their main concern; if they were in the play-offs in the season before he arrived, this quite clearly was not the case.

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4 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Yep, I hoped we wouldn't panic and sack Farke, but any new manager coming in has by definition earned a chance to put his own team together. Smith's not had that yet.

Agreed. Got to stick with him now and hope the style improves when he has some of his own players.

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4 hours ago, canarybubbles said:

The fact that Ipswich made those play-offs is totally irrelevant to Brentford's future after those play-offs: unless they met each other in a crunch match where one of them would be promoted or relegated, their histories were totally independent of each other. You claimed that Smith arrived at Brentford at a time when staying in the league was their main concern; if they were in the play-offs in the season before he arrived, this quite clearly was not the case.

Yawn.  Smith has a decent record as manager. You don’t like/rate him.  I get it.

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27 minutes ago, Inch High aka Inchy.. said:

So why was he sacked by villa?

Well, because they thought their squad was top 8 material. Since he left, they strengthened further and haven't really got any better under Gerrard.

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